Over The River And Through The Woods To Grandmothers House They Go!

Have you ever dumped the kiddos off on the grandparents and took yourselves a little trip?  We are super blessed to have wonderful grandparents who let us do this.  Once a year, my husband and I go out of town to a conference with his workplace.  When we do, I pack for the 2 of us in normal suitcases like normal people, but when it comes to my kids clothes,  I have found this system to be simple, easy and fast. I keep the clothes on hangers!  We hang most of our clothes except for jammies etc,  so their clothes are already on hangers in their closets.  I just have to grab the outfits and off we go!

For my younger 2, I like to wrap the hangers of each outfit together with a rubber band.  I also put little signs on them with their name and what day of the week to wear that particular outfit.  My youngest has a field trip to the pumpkin patch while we are gone, so I made sure the outfit for that day had layers because it will be a chilly, turning warmer in the afternoon, kind of day.  It also helps to keep them from grabbing their “pretty” outfits and wearing them to school instead of to church.  Having them labeled really helps keep them straight, and hopefully will help grandma when it comes to the girls getting dressed, without needing her guidance each morning.  This time I wrote little love notes on the back of the labels for them to read each day, they love sappy stuff like that!

As you can see, my oldest is too cool to have mom put together her outfits, so we just rubber banned her shirts together and her pants together.  She’s already doing the typical female “I’ll decide what to wear the day of, depending on what mood I am in” thing.  She’s only 10!!  She is pretty good at the whole fashion thing, so it is easy to give her a bit more freedom than her sisters.

The rest of the packing is a breeze and they do it themselves for the most part.  They love lugging out their little suitcases, picking a special stuffed animal to take, and trying to sneak whatever they can into their suitcases without mom seeing. 🙂  I told them to make their stuff pretty so I could take a picture for the blog, it made me smile to see what they did, everything laid out just so.  They have been watching me take pictures of our life for this blog, and were pretty excited to be a part of that process. Too cute.